If you’re watching Countdown you already know this — Michael Isikoff reports for Newsweek:
White House anxiety is mounting over the prospect that top officials—including deputy chief of staff Karl Rove and counselor Dan Bartlett-may be forced to provide potentially awkward testimony in the perjury and obstruction trial of Lewis (Scooter) Libby.
Both Rove and Bartlett have already received trial subpoenas from Libby’s defense lawyers, according to lawyers close to the case who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters. While that is no guarantee they will be called, the odds increased this week after Libby’s lawyer, Ted Wells, laid out a defense resting on the idea that his client, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, had been made a “scapegoat†to protect Rove. Cheney is expected to provide the most crucial testimony to back up Wells’s assertion, one of the lawyers close to the case said. The vice president personally penned an October 2003 note in which he wrote, “Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the other.†The note, read aloud in court by Wells, implied that Libby was the one being sacrificed in an effort to clear Rove of any role in leaking the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, wife of Iraq war critic Joe Wilson. “Wow, for all the talk about this being a White House that prides itself on loyalty and discipline, you’re not seeing much of it,†the lawyer said.
Juicy.
Michael Isikoff on Countdown says Karl and Dan received their subpoenas “in recent weeks.”
We’re watching them devour one another. “Juicy” is right.
It’s too bad that this trial is only supposed to address Libby’s obstruction of Fitzgerald’s investigation, and not the White House’s illegal revelation of a CIA operative’s identity. Though you’d never know it from the defense strategy so far.
It seems to me that much of what attorney Wells laid out debunks the laughable Armitage Sacrifice Play, and shows that Plame truly was exposed deliberately, with malice aforethought, and that Richard Armitage didn’t have eff-all to do with it.
It should be fun to watch how things develop. I got a feeling that Fitzpatrick let that little pudgy butt Rove scamper away from an indictment only to bring him back to use in a pinch play to expose the truth that Valerie Plame’s outing was a deliberate political hit against Joe Wilson. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part, but that established fact in the public mind would be the biggest prize Fitzpatrick could win.
Oh.. correction..that’s Fitzgerald not Fitzpatrick. You know who I mean.. The Irish prosecutor who is gonna put a hook in Libby’s ass.
Reminds me of the joke about the two Irish gays: Patrick Fitzgerald and Gerald Fitzpatrick. Seriously though, my favorite aunt’s married name is Fitzpatrick but I know a lot of fine Fitzgeralds too. Go Fitz! We’ll get a Happy Fitzmas after all!